Homer takes in record e-waste for recycling

• City was biggest donor this year with 3 truck loads of electronics
By Naomi Klouda
Homer Tribune

Instead of just trucking them out to a landfill, 24 pallets of Homer’s outdated and unwanted electronics will go on to serve a repurposed life after Saturday’s Electronic Waste Recycling effort at Spenard Builder Supply. The one-day grab scooped up an estimated 21,000 pounds of e-junk.
Some 20 businesses and 107 households brought in a record amount of electronic waste; about 2,000 pounds more than last year. Total Reclaim, the only e-recycling company operating in Alaska, had plans for sharing one TOTE trailer between the communities of Soldotna and Homer — but Homer filled the entire trailer.
“The trailer left straight for Anchorage,” said event organizer Nina Faust. “They will have to send another one down for Soldotna.”
Over four years’ time, Homer has recycled some 54,135 pounds of electronic waste, according to records tracking each year’s totals. From its beginning in 2006 — when 61 households contributed — the event caught on and grew to 107 households. Businesses and nonprofits likewise grew in contributions, growing from 11 that year, to 20 this year.
The City of Homer dumped 4,197 pounds of electronic equipment, becoming this year’s top e-waste recycler. Other big contributors included Homer Electric Association and Kachemak Bay Campus.
Faust pointed out that the event isn’t a competition, “but we do want to acknowledge that there are people and businesses out there doing an exemplary job of bringing in the products for recycling,” she said.
It took three pick-up truck loads to haul the city equipment. Most of it came from years of accumulation of old electronic equipment that was stacked in storage, said City of Homer Personnel Director Sherri Hobbs.
“Most were broken or out-dated,” she explained. “Some had been surpluses two or three times, but no bids came in for them, so they had gone into storage. It was several years worth of accumulation.”
All 21,000 pounds of Homer electronics will now go through Total Reclaim’s process at its distribution center in Seattle. According to an article on Total Reclaim in the Seattle Times, the vast majority passes through approved processors who deconstruct the gadgets and send the raw materials back into the production stream.
Workers pry off the black plastic cases of televisions that are then squashed, baled and eventually ground into pellets and sold to make a wide range of products.
“Workers smash the tubes into pieces, pick out metal, and ship the glass to Mexico for power washing and then to India, to be made back into new picture tubes,” the article said. “They mince circuit boards to be sent to smelters, and they separate valuable metal such as copper, aluminum and steel that gets resold to manufacturers.”

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Posted by Newsroom on Apr 28th, 2010 and filed under Headline News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.